Movie Review: Bumblebee

Bumblebee

Director: Travis Knight

Starring: Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, John Ortiz, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Dylan O’Brien, Justin Theroux, Angela Bassett, Peter Cullen

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 119 minutes

I have a tumultuous relationship with the Transformers series. I’m a 90’s kid, so I grew up watching primarily Beast Wars and Armada, both of which I loved. I owned more Armada toys than I’d care to admit, and at recess the only game we played was Autobots versus Decepticons. As I got into my teenage years, I discovered the 1984 original cartoon and fell in love with that series as well. When the 2007 Transformers film was first announced, I was over the moon with excitement at getting to see all my favorite robots on the big screen.

Unfortunately, while the first movie in the live-action series wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t the Transformers I grew up with and I found myself fairly disappointed with the experience. And from there, things only got worse with each subsequent film until my opinion of the franchise went from “meh” to full-blown hate. When I saw the first trailer for Bumblebee, however, I was intrigued. It seemed to have a simpler story to tell, and from the initial footage, some of the human characters seemed, dare I say, interesting. But most importantly, the Transformers looked and transformed like their original incarnations from the ’84 series instead of the scrapyard amalgamations we got in the newer film series. I found myself actually excited about a Transformers property again. And after viewing the film, I can say with confidence that this is the best one the live-action series has to offer by a wide margin.

The opening scene takes place on the Transformers’ homeworld Cybertron as a massive war is being waged between the Autobots and Decepticons. From the opening scene alone, we get spectacular visuals as the robots fight, and we get to see many familiar faces if you’re familiar with the franchise. After a time, the Autobot B-127 (voiced by Dylan O’Brien) is sent to Earth to establish a base for his comrades but is found by the Decepticon Blitzwing and after a confrontation B-127 is left mute and amnesiac. From here, the main events of the movie transpire.

If you can’t tell already, I really enjoyed this film. B-127, who eventually is known by his titular name, through his amnesia gets to explore a lot of typical fish-out-of-water tropes, and even though they’re pretty standard they are still fun and play out in a way that portrays Bee almost as a lost child for a lot of the movie (in a good way). What’s more, for a character who can’t speak Bee shows a lot of emotion throughout the movie, and he and our human protagonist Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) share some really touching moments together onscreen.

Speaking of which, Charlie is a compelling and likable character who the audience can sympathize with. Due to her personal hardships she comes across as an outcast, but she’s never overly mopey or annoying. You always understand why she acts the way she does, and Steinfeld does a great job of making the character feel real. The movie is also set in the 80’s, which means plenty of references abound, but what really works for the movie is the 80’s vibe brings the movie back to its cartoon origins in a big way and a lot of the cheesy dialogue and goofy elements feel more like homage to the classic show than bad writing.

I didn’t love everything about the film, however. Most of the other human characters besides Charlie are either boring or forgettable. Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) is the male sidekick/love interest thirsty friend who doesn’t add much to the story beside some comic relief. Dr. Powell (John Ortiz) is the stereotypical scientist so focused on communicating with alien life that he can’t see how obviously evil they are. And John Cena gives a ridiculously overacted performance as the aggro militant agent Jack Burns. Come on Cena, you’re already a huge, intimidating dude. You don’t have to try so hard! Beyond the humans, while I did enjoy most of the 80’s references at times it felt like they were really trying to cram a lot down our throats. How many times are you going to mention ALF is on television? We get it, it’s 1987! Not to mention, despite this being a Michael Bay-less Transformers film the movie still somehow found a way to get both young male characters shirtless at some point and had a scantily-clad girl who did nothing for the plot besides looking pretty.

Even despite the lackluster elements of the film, the main reason we come to see these films (aka the Transformers) have never looked better and every moment of the action with the robots in disguise had me grinning like a little kid again. I can’t say that this is a perfect film by any means, but as a fan of the classic Transformers cartoon series Bumblebee is a leap in the right direction and I can forgive a lot of the negatives because the positives stood out so much.